later nerdz; it’s about techgnarlogy

Watch the Gameplay Video or Fail Life

Id Software’s John Carmack, one of the worlds most celebrated game makers, projects that Quake Live will have “hundreds of thousands of players, if not millions.”

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I found this term in Seed Magazine this morning. Seems like a word that will be applicable more often now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solastalgia

Solastalgia is a neologism coined by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe a form of homesickness or nostalgia one gets when still at home. It was coined with particular reference to environmental change in one’s surroundings due to development or climate change.

My guess is somewhere around 10 by 2030. Read more for a short clip of a cool animated anime version of Batman.

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Netflix subscribers, if you’ve got an Xbox 360 and a Windows Vista PC, you don’t have to shell out $99 for Roku’s Netflix Player box to get your Watch Instantly library on your TV screen
—you already have everything you need. Using the free Windows Media Center plug-in, vmcNetflix, you can turn your Xbox 360 into a Netflix Watch Instantly box.

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One of the things I learned after school that I didn’t know while I was in school is that most people don’t know what they are doing. A lot of things are done on the fly. Many people are in trouble, a position of authority, or pinnacle of their field because of happenstance. With the exception of doctors, lawyers or accountants, I think.

My Dad’s friend, Mark Wumkes, when we visited him in Alaska, told me that the one thing he knows for certain is that there is no way humanity will ever know everything. He said something like “for every 1 thing we learn, 3 mysteries are created.” It’s pretty true and most of what we do is act like it’s not but that is ok. That is how we get anywhere, and focus on the ridiculous number of higher and more flammable hoops we leap through each financal quarter. Some people do not enjoy hoops and Alaska is one place with very few.

This flavor of nihlism really wrecks havoc on due diligence in the hoop-jumping realm. Because if no one, including me, knows what the fuck is going on, then it is difficult to take situations seriously that include hoop-jumping. And there are plenty of things that require sober attention and brevity. It seems mostly relationships and then also opportunities but only for split seconds. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself for now.

There’s going to be a ton of them and most of them will suck but some of them will be ground breaking for their niche markets.

You heard it here first.

Last night I was checking out some of the recent demos posted on XBox Live. Unfortunately I checked out Ninja Gaiden 2 and had my memories devalued by a 3D abomination unworthy of the name. Someone named “Team Ninja” published this and actually thought that the speed and timing of the original Ninja Gaiden would translate properly into a 3D world. I wish they would have stuck to the side-scroller.

But then I also downloaded a demo of Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1. Precipice of Darkness is an episodic role-playing game by the two geniuses behind the video game web-comic Penny Arcade and the Penny Arcade Expo.

Based on my limited experience with the demo I think it is safe to say that this game will not disappoint three demographics:

1. Penny Arcade fans
2. Old school computer games (fans of Space Quest, Monkey Island, etc)
3. RPG video gamers

This game appears to be a slick combination of Penny Arcade humor, story-first presentation, and an interesting evolution of traditional RPG turn-based gameplay. The gameplay includes elements of turn-based mechanics such as that used in FFXI along with more arcade style mechanics such as button mashing and timing tests seen in games such as Mario Party.

I’m going to buy this game on Xbox Live but it’s also available for PC, Mac and Linux on it’s website: www.rainslick.com

Is the road to true digital immersion paved with incremental simulation?

this is interesting:

http://home.novint.com/products/novint_falcon.php

http://gear.ign.com/articles/833/833067p1.html

but still, nothing’s quite so direct:

NWS: http://www.ascensionsuspension.com/extreme/images/rotisserrie%20(1)_jpg.jpg

It is very frustrating for me to hear people say “Design for the user.”

In my mind I always am saying “No shit.”

But that doesn’t mean do what the user wants. I still believe in designing for yourself.

Designing for yourself has a bad rap. It does produce a lot of terrible art that passes as design, and it leaves a lot of users thinking “what the hell is this and how do I use it?” It is also seen by many designers as arrogant design. I believe there is a successful way to design for yourself though and that is through empathy. If you successfully take on the role of the user, then you are still designing for yourself. The difference is that you’re using your experiences as a filter (such as your design knowledge and your experience using many more objects than the user).

If we completely design for users, rely on user research as absolute truth, then we forget to make design decisions. We forget who is in control. User research is not to create personas or scenarios at face value, it is to create designer empathy which should inform all design work for ourselves as designers and for our clients.

I got the Dungeon Masters guide book. Expect to see “Level 0 Dungeon Master seeks similarly new D&D players for epic after-hours office dragonslaying” on craigslist soon.

I’ve heard their new album and it’s terrible. Not even worth pirating.

More

The price is lowered but the increase in monthly fees equals more!

Sticking with Helio and waiting for a GPhone!

Also: Mobile.me is nothing new. BORING.

“don’t care”

I just got a new Chase amazon.com visa and had to activate it. After the automatic activation I was connected to a woman with a great british accent. As she was giving me spiel after spiel on balance transfers to identity theft, I lost track of what she was saying and wondered who was this person I was talking to.

I figured she worked in India because I called at 7:40 pm PST and she had a very clear proper english accent. She spoke very clearly and quickly, as well as any professional sales person. Here I was, pacing my apartment and not listening to her but wondering what the hell is someone who is such an eloquent speaker selling me balance transfers so that I can buy a new digital camera or whatever. That person is probably much more driven, and frankly smarter than me, and she’s using some of the oldest tricks in the book without skipping a beat. As I mention being familiar with the points system and identity theft, she responds starting with “I’m glad to hear we have such learned customers at Chase.” She used embedded commands and was pacing me. She also properly used the word ‘well’ in place of ‘good’ and just generally gave a great impression. So why is she in India answering phones?

It gave me a strange feeling of things being out of balance.